Walter Remine: A paper analysis & a lesson in dishonesty.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 12:54 am

by australopithecus

scalyblue wrote:Remine is a well known sloppy 'scientist'. He's actually an electrical engineer. The primary focus of his work is Haldane's problem, ignoring of course that Haldane said himself that his numbers needed major work, and assumed constant population sizes for the sake of ease of mathematics.

Let me quote another user from another forum.

The primary way Walter avoids refutations is by avoiding making any coherent self-contained argument. He's been doing this for years. Most biologists seem satisfied that his claims manage to fit into three basic categories.

The obvious, which no-one disputes and for which Walter's particular spin of their special significance is often asserted, never justified.The opaque; claims never made in public but alluded to vaguely as some dramatic insight that is available when you buy his self-published book.The refuted; claims that have been thoroughly refuted for years even though Walter would never admit it in a blue fit.

I can refute that entire paper with two sentences.

"Why would the next generation have to have the 'same population' (i.e., same population size) as the previous? Is this a requirement of evolution?"

I mean, it's laughable. In the abstract itself, the abstract mind you, he says that he dismisses such confusing factors such as the environment and extinction.

As an aside - ReMine and his cronies are conflating issues, as usual - yes, his submitted manuscript was reviewed by the people he refers to and at least one other person. His manuscript was rejected for a couple of reasons, and none of them were what ReMine and his cheerleaders want us to think they were. Among the reasons were the unoriginality of the conclusion - ReMine comes to the same conclusion that Haldane did (re: cost of substitution), he just derived it in a different manner, another was the non-academic, non-scientific style of the paper. His original submitted version (which, I understand, has been 'cleaned up' for "publication" in a creationist venu) contained a number of dismissive statements and some self-aggrandizing, which is frowned on in scientific publications. ReMine did not attempt to re-submit nor did he attempt to submit his manuscript anywhere else. Anyone who has had a scientific paper published knows that a huge proportion of manuscripts are turned down initially. Typically, an author will make corrections, take advice from the reviewers, etc., and resubmit or will try to have the paper published elsewhere. ReMine did not do this - his original manuscript was rejected and he decided to engage in a multi-year martydom-fest.

Anyway, the conflation is this - even if ReMine's reformulation of Haldane's model is 100% absolutely correct, it is not in any way support for his application of Haldane's model to human evolution, which is ReMine's bread-and-butter argument.

)O( Hytegia )O( wrote:Let us apply Walter Remine's paper to real-life Biology:I am a blonde. My grandfather was a Blonde. Blonde is a recessive trait, meaning it will only show up 1/4 offspring in my genetic pool. According to Remine's logic, 1/4 of all my offspring will be blonde.However, I have 4 children that are brown-haired within the next few years.

I have a FIFTH child and it has blonde hair.

What does this say towards Remine's logic? It shows a foundational flaw with his entire approach, and highlights the difference between mathematical systems of absolute certainty and biological systems.Biological systems, though bound by patterns, are simply in the realm of probability of occurence and alteration over generations. 1/4th of my offspring will, indeed, have Blonde hair - but that will compile to a higher probability as generations pass without a blonde born within the family. Likewise, my children with brown hair may produce more blondes than brown hair depending upon their genetic combination of recessive/dominant features of hair color.

Walter Remine's paper also does not account for adverse environmental reactions weeding off species not suited for the environment and leaving those which do adapt to keep their niche within it.

I see nowhere within this paper that counts for genetic variety and accent of positive/beneficial mutations based upon environmental discourse. >.>

You're supposed to present me an article with claims I can verify - not a bunch of assumed numbers and variables pulled out of no data that was gathered, and then presented within a format that makes no claims and is, instead, a critique of evolutionary sciences.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 1:05 am

by scalyblue

Thanks Lucy, I was looking for those posts ;;

Also

Scalyblue wrote:Mathematics is only as accurate as the problem presented and the data inputed. Haldane himself said that he was pretty sure that drastic changes will need to be made to the math; why aren't you using the revised version of his math and instead the original verison?

TL;DRIn 1988, scientists took a strain of E. Coli, divided it into 12 different samples, and let it grow and evolve, while retaining frozen samples of the original, and every few thousand generations or so. One of the samples developed the ability to eat something that would otherwise be inedible, and flourished. Taking an ancestor strain and replicating the same conditions brings on the same adaptation in a roughly equivalent number of generations, but if you take an ancestor from too far back the adaptation is less likely to happen.

Remine's posit has been refuted by 50,000+ generations of research, and at any time somebody with the facilities to handle bacteria cultures can ask for the living bacteria from the experiment and get consistent results.

Again, as I shall say, Remine is wrong, on this, and in everything else biological that I have found on the internet.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 1:19 am

by australopithecus

I'm loathed to accept any paper on the subject of Haldane's dilemma in support of creationism given that Haldane's calculations themselves were found be be in error, with the man himself stating it would need revision.

I'm seriously baffled to how this is supposed to undermine evolutionary theory, and that's based on the few days I've had to look into this whole line of reasoning.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:58 pm

by he_who_is_nobody

australopithecus wrote:I'm loathed to accept any paper on the subject of Haldane's dilemma in support of creationism given that Haldane's calculations themselves were found be be in error, with the man himself stating it would need revision.

Another way of saying this is garbage in, garbage out. This is the main criticism of ReMine and his republishing of Haldane's Dilemma.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:10 pm

by Frenger

he_who_is_nobody wrote:

australopithecus wrote:I'm loathed to accept any paper on the subject of Haldane's dilemma in support of creationism given that Haldane's calculations themselves were found be be in error, with the man himself stating it would need revision.

Another way of saying this is garbage in, garbage out. This is the main criticism of ReMine and his republishing of Haldane's Dilemma.

By what I've seen of YYNJ from just reading the forum, it seems pretty plain that he doesn't read any of the papers before handing them over as "incredible facts to disprove ALL of science".

I noticed about 9 errors on the first two pages, and I'm an idiot.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 5:56 pm

by Inferno

he_who_is_nobody wrote:This is also why I cannot wait for YesYouNeedJesus to provide the citation for this claim made in the other thread.

Didn't he already admit that the figure was pulled out of his ass?

YesYouNeedJesus wrote:If more than Inferno is not willing to admit that if I (or my buddy or Remine) can show that our supposed simian ancestor needed 16,000 offspring to keep from de-evolving, then the theory of evolution has a serious problem, then you are all just afraid. And you don't have any need to be which it makes it that much more hilarious.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:21 pm

by Inferno

Let's start this off with the introduction of the wikipedia article entitled

"Haldane's dilemma" wrote:Haldane's Dilemma refers to a limit on the speed of beneficial evolution, first calculated by J. B. S. Haldane in 1957, and clarified further by later commentators. Creationists, and proponents of intelligent design in particular, claim it remains unresolved. Contrary to creationist claims, Haldane's dilemma is of no importance in the evolutionary genetics literature. Today, Haldane's Dilemma is raised mostly by creationists opposed to evolution, who claim it is evidence against large-scale evolution, and a supposed example of negligence on the part of the scientific community.

Haldane stated at the time of publication "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision", and subsequent corrected calculations found that the cost disappears. He had made an invalid simplifying assumption which negated his assumption of constant population size, and had also incorrectly assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, while sexual recombination means that two can be selected simultaneously so that both reach fixation more quickly. The creationist claim is based on further errors and invalid assumptions.

That pretty much in itself shows where Remine went wrong. No matter, let's look at the rest.

The first thing to note, as shown in the wikipedia quote above, is the fact that Haldane's dilemma has already been resolved:

Talk Origins: Claim CB121 wrote:Haldane's "cost of natural selection" stemmed from an invalid simplifying assumption in his calculations. He divided by a fitness constant in a way that invalidated his assumption of constant population size, and his cost of selection is an artifact of the changed population size. He also assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, but because of sexual recombination, the two can be selected simultaneously and both reach fixation sooner. With corrected calculations, the cost disappears (Wallace 1991; Williams n.d.).

From the CB121 link, we can also get a short summary of the errors ReMine makes:

ReMine (1993), who promotes the claim, makes several invalid assumptions. His model is contradicted by the following:

The vast majority of differences would probably be due to genetic drift, not selection.

Many genes would have been linked with genes that are selected and thus would have hitchhiked with them to fixation.

Many mutations, such as those due to unequal crossing over, affect more than one codon.

Human and ape genes both would be diverging from the common ancestor, doubling the difference.

ReMine's computer simulation supposedly showing the negative influence of Haldane's dilemma assumed a population size of only six (Musgrave 1999).

YesYouNeedJesus, do you agree that these are all problems ReMine faces? Do you accept that ReMine was wrong from the outset or do we absolutely need to get into every single problem in the paper? If you want me to address those problems or the problems in any of the 50 papers you linked to, and yes, I will address them if you absolutely want me to, I must first ask you to address the challenges we have posed to you.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 11:21 pm

by rareblackatheist

Uh guys....He wasn't expecting you guys to actually find any errors in it. That's what they usually do. Link something that has convinced them with the assumption that since it makes sense to them, it must be infallible.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 12:38 pm

by australopithecus

Kind of funny, I think, that given YYNJ's constant protestations of censorship of Remine he hasn't once decided to partake in this thread. One could assume he was just being a drama queen for the sake of it.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:40 pm

by scalyblue

australopithecus wrote:Kind of funny, I think, that given YYNJ's constant protestations of censorship of Remine he hasn't once decided to partake in this thread. One could assume he was just being a drama queen for the sake of it.

Why don't u use ur mod powers to post a link to this thread in each of the locked ones to get his attention.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:04 pm

by australopithecus

Me and Rex did that already before we locked the topics. He can't claim ignorance.

Re: Walter Remine: Paper analysis.

Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 6:38 pm

by IBSpify

australopithecus wrote:Kind of funny, I think, that given YYNJ's constant protestations of censorship of Remine he hasn't once decided to partake in this thread. One could assume he was just being a drama queen for the sake of it.

Common creationist tactic #7:

when someone examines your claims and refutes them, ignore the responses and stay quite for at least 1 week, then restate your claims and hope everybody forgot that they already refuted your arguments